The Beating of His Wings by Paul Hoffman Read Free Book Online Page B

himself.
    He gave them a detailed account of the truth, the lies he had made everyone tell to cover it up as well as the peculiar bad luck that had put him in the lunatic ward in the first place. IdrisPukke went off to see the newly appointed Director of the asylum and gave her hell about the treatment given to such an important person. What kind of institution was she running? he’d asked, and other rhetorical questions of that sort. In a short time he had gouged a promise from her to end the investigation into the events of that night, and to have Cale brought under the personal daily care of their most skilled mind doctor and at no extra expense. IdrisPukke demanded and received a further promise to cut the fees for Cale’s treatment in half.
    By no means all of his anger was simulated. He had not expected a cure, given that Cale’s collapse had been so great, but he’d hoped for an improvement both because of his great affection for the boy but also because he wanted to work with Cale on a much grander long-term strategy fordealing with the Redeemers. But Cale could not even speak for long without pausing to rest and gather his thoughts: and besides, there was the dreadful look of him. When Cale gave away in passing that today was an unusually good day, IdrisPukke realized that the help they desperately needed from Cale might come too late, if it came at all.
    IdrisPukke demanded the Director summon the mind doctor who was to take care of Cale so that he could put his mind at rest as to his quality. The Director, knowing that IdrisPukke had to leave the next day, lied that the doctor was away on retreat and would not return for another three days.
    ‘She’s an anomist,’ said the Director.
    ‘I’m not familiar with the term.’
    ‘She treats anomie, diseases of the soul, by talking, sometimes for hours a day and for many months. Patients call it the talking cure.’ He could be reassured, said the Director, that she was a healer of uncommon skill and she had made headway with even the most intractable cases.
    Although he was not sure he believed her about the convenient ‘retreat’, IdrisPukke could sense the sincerity of the Director’s admiration for the supposedly absent woman. He took more hope from this, because he wanted it to be true, than his pessimistic nature would normally allow. That nature would have reasserted itself in full measure when, five minutes after he left to return to Cale, there was a knock on the Director’s door which was opened even before she could say ‘come in’. The woman who entered, if it was a woman, was of a very curious appearance and holding in her left hand something so strange that not even IdrisPukke, with all his many experiences of the singular and the fantastical, had seen anything like it.

5
     
    Kevin Meatyard was unwell. He had a badly sprained ankle, a dislocated shoulder, a large cut on the left side of his head and assorted welts, cricks and tears. But none of them would kill him. It was the knife in his upper chest that would do that. The Island of Cyprus was not an island at all but a large isthmus that ballooned out into the Wooden Sea. Its system of parochial justice extended fifty miles into the hinterland so that even small villages had a special constable – even if he was only the blacksmith. Meatyard had every reason to believe he would be followed although he also realized it would be too expensive and difficult to keep half a dozen men on the road for long. The problem for him was that he knew he must stay away from any place where he could get the knife removed and the wound cleaned. In the end, he trusted in his constitution to keep him alive long enough to get so far away that no one would have heard of him. So it was that while Kevin Meatyard was trying to leave Cyprus on a road out of the way of nosy strangers, the Two Trevors were trying to enter Cyprus on a road out of the way of nosy strangers. So it was less of a coincidence than it